How Far "Ahead Of The Curve" Can You Get?

"The mysterious Stonehenge was a dance arena for ancient revellers listening to 'trance-style' music, according to one professor who is an expert in sound.

Stonehenge has baffled archaeologists who have argued for decades over the stone circle's 5,000-year history - but now academic Dr Rupert Till believes he has solved the riddle by suggesting it may have been used for ancient raves."

-- The Daily Mail

"If someone decides to use nuclear weapons in anger, I hope he buys enough carbon credits beforehand – people and things vaporized by the ensuing fires will put a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere."

-- Frederick C. Kurz, responding to a Dianne Feinstein column on nuclear weapons, in a comment to The Wall Street Journal.


"Incompetence and infighting are endemic to nonprofits, of course. But Wikipedia's bureaucracy is distinctly, fearsomely awful. The site, which dictates the online reputation of countless living people and companies, itself operates by rules that are completely incomprehensible, determined by a self-appointed group of volunteer editors who can seldom stop arguing over obscurities to explain their ways to outsiders."

-- Owen Thomas, giving us all a WTF? moment, over at the ValleyWag.

"A group called the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee is urging President-elect Barack Obama to "end the six-decade truth embargo" on UFOs. Specifically, the group wants Obama to 'demand a full briefing' from the military and intelligence agencies on what they know about extraterrestrial phenomena. They want him to press for congressional hearings. They want him to 'formally acknowledge the extraterrestrial presence.' And make available for development the technologies that aliens have brought to Earth. 



They want him to open thousands of pages of documents, and who knows, maybe even divulge the plot of 'Battlestar Galactica's' final season before it airs this winter."

-- The Chicago Tribune

Debating "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

"President-elect Barack Obama has selected two of the nation’s most prominent scientific advocates for a vigorous response to climate change to serve in his administration’s top ranks, according to sources, sending the strongest signal yet that he will reverse Bush administration policies on energy and global warming.



The appointments of Harvard University physicist John Holdren as presidential science adviser and Oregon State University marine biologist Jane Lubchenco as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will be announced tomorrow, dismayed conservatives but heartened environmentalists and researchers.



Like Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Holdren and Lubchenco have argued repeatedly for a mandatory limit on greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change. In 2007, as chairman of the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Holdren oversaw approval of the board’s first statement on global warming, which said: 'It is time to muster the political will for concerted action.'

In October, Lubchenco told the Associated Press that she believed public attitudes on climate change were shifting, adding: 'The Bush administration has not been respectful of the science. But I think that’s not true of Republicans in general. I know it’s not.'"

-- Juliet Eilperin and Joel Achenbach, providing us with even more evidence we live with waayyy too much stupid journalism today, in The Washington Post.

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs